The Princess And The Fop
by VickyVicarious
Summary: Ema is a grumpy princess. Klavier is a not-so-suave frog. ...It's true love.


A direct parody of the Brothers Grimm version of the fairy tale 'The Princess and the Frog', which can easily be found through Google if you'd like to read the original.

* * *

 **1**

 **Once upon a time,** there was a young princess. She had once been rather sweet and innocent and kind, as is generally expected of princesses, but then she was informed that in order to comply with a somewhat outdated law in her kingdom, forensic studies must take a backseat to princess duties - and all that kind innocent sweetness went out the window. Now, she would have hands-down won 'Grumpiest In Gown' daily, were that an actual competition.

So one fine afternoon, the grumpy young princess put on her pink-tinted sunglasses and labcoat, and went to take a walk by herself in search of a crime scene to surreptitiously investigate; and when she came upon no such thing, she took a break by Gourd Lake to regroup and munch on some Snackoos. Now she had her treasured luminol spray in her hand, which was her favorite forensic tool; and she was always spraying things with it, and eagerly observing them through her sunglasses for any trace of blood.

After a time the princess decided she might as well spray the log on which she sat, just in case it had been the scene of a gory murder, but her fingers were slippery after eating so many snacks, and they lost grip on the bottle; which rolled swiftly away, until at last it fell down into the lake. The princess leapt to her feet and tried to snatch back the spray-bottle, but due to the monster in its depths, Gourd Lake was a unique phenomenon that had its own tide of a sorts, and the bottle had already been carried off. The princess observed this, calculated the likelihood of her surviving a fight with the hungry kraken dwelling in the lake, and soon began to pout angrily and pelt her Snackoos at the surface of the water. "Damn it," she cried, "that was my last bottle! If I were a forensic investigator that wouldn't even matter, they would just give me more instead of making me barter stupid etiquette lessons for every bottle! I'd trade all of these shitty petticoats for the chance to be a real forensic investigator, but NO, of course I have to be a PRINCESS-"

Whilst she was shouting, a frog put its head out of the water, and said, "Fraulein, why do you - OW!"

She'd hit it with a Snackoo.

"Get lost, amphibian!" she snarled, and hit it again. It ducked under the water just in time to dodge the third projectile, and emerged spluttering.

"Wait!" The frog cried. "I don't have any need for all your shitty petticoats, but I can at least retrieve your luminol spray for you, if you do me one small favor!"

"Really?!" The princess gasped, eyes sparkling with pure joy. In that moment, to the eyes of the frog, she was truly a vision of beauty; and he fell instantly in love.

"Yes," he croaked, and swam a little closer. "All I ask is your love, Fraulein."

She stared at him in utter horror.

"...And also to live with you and sleep in your bed and share your food," he added in a very rushed voice, before attempting a charming grin, one leg coming up to brush at the side of his face in a weird kind of flicking movement. "Surely no hardship for a kind princess such as yourself, ja?"

'What the fuck,' the princess thought. 'Scientifically speaking, this frog shouldn't even be talking, though I suppose magic could account for that.' (She thought this rather bitterly indeed, as magic was often resistant to forensic efforts and therefore high on her most hated list, right after etiquette lessons.) 'But it's not like he'll be able to follow me back to the castle anyway, and I really don't want to suffer through another curtsying lesson, so why not just let him get it and then ditch the gross thing?'

So she said to the frog, "Okay, whatever, just get the spray back pronto."

Then the frog put his head down, and dived deep under the water; and after a little while he came up again, with the spray in his mouth, and threw it on the edge of the lake.

* * *

 **2**

As soon as she saw the spray land on the beach, the princess snatched it up; and she was so overjoyed to have it back, not to mention she was going to be late to dinner, that she did an about-face to sprint back home and paid no heed to the gallant amphibian who had rescued her treasure.

The frog called after her, "Nein, Fraulein, don't run off so fast! Remember your promise, take me with you!"

But she did not stop to hear a word.

The next day, during the princess's usual mid-afternoon break for a Snackoo or fifty with her sister, she heard a strange noise - tap, tap - plash, plash - as if, scientifically speaking, something were coming up the marble staircase; and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock on her door, and then a silky-smooth voice began to sing:

"Open the door, my Fraulein dear,  
Open the door to thy true love here!  
Though a guilty love it may be,  
Remember what you promised me.  
Achtung!"

Then the princess ran to the door and opened it, and there she saw the frog, whom she had wilfully forgotten. Here in the better lighting, his skin was glimmering moistly, and he was currently engaged in some very enthusiastic air-guitaring. At this sight she was sorely vexed, and would have flung a Snackoo at him, had she not left them all on the table across the room. Thus, she decided to instead slam the door in his face before returning as quickly as she could to the table, a humongous grumpy pout on her face.

The queen, her older sister, seeing that something had really pissed her off, asked her what was the matter.

"There is a glimmerous frog," said she, "at the door, that lifted my luminol for me out of Gourd Lake yesterday morning. He asked to live with me in exchange and I kind of said whatever sure since I figured he wouldn't be able to follow me back here; but there he is at the door, and he's acting like some kind of rocker wannabe."

While she was speaking the frog knocked again at the door, and sang again, even louder than before:

"Open the door, my Fraulein dear,  
Open the door to thy true love here!  
Though a guilty love it may be,  
Remember what you promised me.  
Achtung!"

* * *

 **3**

Then the queen wrinkled her nose and said to the grumpy princess, "You're right, he does sound gross. Still, it sounds like you kind of promised, and you know how dedicated I am to justice being upheld; so go and let him in."

She very reluctantly did so, and the frog hopped into the room, and then straight on - tap, tap - plash, plash - from the bottom of the room all the way over to where the royal family were sitting at their table sneering down at him.

"Pray lift me upon thine chair," said he to the princess, who rolled her eyes at his fancy talk, "and let me sit next to you."

"Ugh," she said, but did, since she had sort of promised, after all.

As soon as she had done this, the frog did something that looked like he was attempting to lean forward and beam down charmingly at her, but as he was significantly smaller than she it really just gave him a good view down her top.

He said, "Now wouldst thou- oh mein Gott."

The princess promptly smacked him all the way across the room.

Several minutes later, he came stumbling back, and requested, this time in much plainer and humbler English, "Fraulein, may I please have one of your Snackoos?"

She swung a furious glare down at him, more than ready to refuse - when the queen pointedly cleared her throat. "Gah, fine, you disgusting glimmerous amphibian," the princess agreed, and flicked a Snackoo his way.

He attempted to crunch it down somewhat awkwardly, as frogs don't have teeth, and when he had eaten as much as he could, he said, "I'm exhausted, and I think concussed - mind carrying me to your bed?" And the princess, though very unwilling, took him up in her hand, squeezing him around the belly too tightly so his legs dangled uselessly and he could hardly squeak out a croak or two, and carried him to her bedroom, where she tossed him roughly at the pillow. He landed with enough force to knock him out immediately, or perhaps it was the concussion from before, but in any event he slept all night long.

As soon as it was light the frog jumped up, hopped downstairs, and went out of the castle.

'Now then,' thought the princess, 'finally the idiot frog is gone. That was mega gross, scientifically speaking, but at least I won't have to deal with him any more.'

But she was mistaken; for when night came again she heard the same tapping at the door; and the frog started rocking out just beyond it again, singing:

"Open the door, my Fraulein dear,  
Open the door to thy true love here!  
Though a guilty love it may-"

She jerked the door open, shouting, "Shut the hell up you damn glimmerous amphibian! Can't you at least change up your stupid tune a bit, if you can't just ask to come in like a normal person?!"

The frog lifted a leg to do that weird flicking motion by the side of his head once again. "I can't help it that my compositions are based on feelings, or that my love for you is unchanging and unfaltering, my beautiful Fraulein."

"Seriously, shut up," she said, and took him to bed.

The third day was much the same, except that this time he switched up the lyrics a bit:

"Open the door, my Fraulein dear,  
Open the door to thine true love here!  
Though grumpy you, and a frog I be,  
Our love will last all eternity!"

She swung the door open - and into him - before he could add the 'Achtung!', and carried him inside, berating him all the while how that was NOT the sort of change she meant and he KNEW it, the pompous little pest, and did he know that she was seriously considering trying out a certain recipe for live frog for breakfast, what did he think of that -

The frog only croaked in a somewhat squashed, besotted manner, and soon fell asleep in her arms. But when the princess awoke on the following morning she was astonished to find herself wrapped up in a warm embrace. She opened her eyes to see, instead of the frog, a handsome prince, gazing on her with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

* * *

 **4**

"SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING, YOU MUST BE THE FROG, RIGHT?!" she screeched, and his charming smile wavered at her discordant voice.

"Ja," he said, nonetheless. "My name is Klavier Gavin, actually," and then he kind of beamed at her in this twinkling, expectant way while she blinked back, uncomprehending.

"...Of the Gavinners?" he said, eventually. "Perhaps you've heard our hit single, 'Guilty Love'?"

The princess shrugged.

"I suppose not everyone can be a fan," he conceded, somewhat sullenly, before reaching up to flick at his hair in an arrogantly attractive sort of way, the charming-ness of which was severely damaged when the princess realized it was the same spastic gesture he'd been making with his little frog arms all this time. "I am also a prince, by the way."

"...You're a fop," said the princess with dull horror. "That's even worse than being a frog. And you're even more glimmerous now, this is terrible."

Klavier looked like he didn't really know what to say to that, and kind of just coughed awkwardly for a second before saying, "And what is your name, mein leibe?"

"Why should I tell you," the princess asked suspiciously, and the frog-turned-fop unleashed a truly glimmerous grin.

"Because I am a prince, and etiquette demands it," he said smugly (he'd obviously not asked until now because he'd been planning this); and she was left with no choice but to fumingly reply:

"...Ema Skye."

"Well, Ema Skye," Klavier purred, "You have saved me. A spiteful fairy, actually an ex-bandmate of mine in fact, enchanted me -"

"I really don't care," she said. "Can you get out of my bed now?"

He frowned a little, looking down at her; then his embrace tightened a little as he leaned down to gaze directly into her eyes, that same stupid foppish grin on his face and his gross gorgeous eyes leaving her more than a little dizzy and feeling kind of disgustingly breathless.

"You," said the fop, "have broken his cruel charm, and now I have nothing to wish for but that you should go on tour with me into the surrounding kingdoms, where I will perform dazzling shows and also at some point marry you, and love you as long as you live."

"...Pass," the princess said, glaring up at him despite the blush on her cheeks.

"Did I mention that as my betrothed it will be perfectly appropriate for you to follow me around and adopt my kingdom's customs, and my kingdom has nothing against princesses being forensic investigators?" he asked, slyly.

The grumpy princess, you may be sure, was not long in saying 'yes' to all this - in fact, she took barely a moment to process the implications of what he was saying before she was shouting the word, and leaning up to kiss him right on his stupid glimmerous face.

He kind of gasped in a lovestruck way, and tumbled back on the bed; the no-longer-so-grumpy princess rolled with him and soon they commenced to rather a heavy make-out session, complete with some frustrated fumbling and mutual aggravation over all those shitty petticoats; and as they were struggling with ten million tiny buttons a ridiculously posh band's tour bus pulled up outside, with the Gavinners symbol erected gaudily above it in a way that, while certainly eye-catching, caused many a detour to avoid going under bridges or through tunnels, and honked its horn.

The horn was actually a painfully loud electric-guitar riff version of that same stupid tune he'd been warbling at her door for the past few days.

"UGH," the princess said, and kissed Klavier again before getting up to pack all her lab equipment. The prince grinned fondly, and went downstairs to greet his faithful bus driver/valet/pretty much all-around lackey, a much-aggrieved lad named Apollo who greeted him with a, "I really kind of hoped you'd never come back, to be honest."

"Ah, Herr Forehead, you never change," Klavier said fondly, and set the man to lugging all the princess's secret stashes of heavy lab equipment onto the vehicle, while the happy couple took their leave of the queen.

Then they got in the tour bus, with its garishly painted sides, even more garish decoration on top, probably most garish ever musical horn, and brand new heavy load of forensic gear, and all set out, full of joy and merriment, for their first gig, which they reached safely; but at which there was a grisly murder that Ema was able to investigate with her trusty luminol amongst other supplies, and they lived happily ever after.


End file.
